Contradiction Rules As Martial Law Dies

January 03, 1985|By Kay Withers, Special to The Tribune.

WARSAW — Not long ago, Polish security police closed a Warsaw underground print shop, confiscated all printed material and equipment and arrested two activists alleged to have run off copies of the banned Tygodnik Mazowsze weekly.

A few days later, at his weekly press conference, government spokesman Jerzy Urban quoted a dissident priest who called communism ``a drunken Soviet whore.`` The next day, the offensive phrase appeared in the state-controlled press.

The contradiction about free speech is one of many contradictions in this country three years after martial law was imposed to end the Solidarity free trade union movement. Martial law has been lifted, but Solidarity is still banned, and efforts at reform are often stifled by crushing realities of Poland`s geographic and economic problems.

There is, for instance, an economic reform that gives enormous leeway to managerial independence and the profit motive.

But the manager of a large enterprise confided: ``With the new system I have freedom but (only) on paper, because I don`t have money, for which I have to ask the ministry.``

A NEW UNION movement now boasts 5 million members and a new leader, Alfred Miodowicz, a former Solidarity activist. At his first press conference, Miodowicz rejected the idea of union pluralism as advocated by Solidarity founder Lech Walesa.

So it is too soon to either exult or debunk.

Nevertheless, the fact that there are these contradictions perhaps adds up to something in the direction of what Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski, the premier and Communist Party leader, likes to call ``normalization.``

Dec. 13, the third anniversary of martial law, passed without incident. For the first time in three years, a significant date went by without opposition demonstrations or prominent displays of police reinforcements.

The underground Solidarity radio made what one dissident called the most realistic appeal he had heard. Calling for ``a thought-out, wise program,``

A WESTERN DIPLOMAT was able to say, ``Jaruzelski has managed to project an image of sincerity to most of the population.``

But despite the relative calm, Jaruzelski has not, as the diplomat pointed out, solved Poland`s great problems: economic weakness, uncertain links with the West, the lack of dialogue between authorities and opposition, and, to a lesser extent, church-state relations.

The consumer is better off than he was, and the long lines in front of the shops have disappeared. But the Polish economy is still idling, a consequence of inefficiency, antiquated equipment, shortages of materials and a disaffected tendency to slough off at work.

Until recently, Poland had not been able to join the International Monetary Fund because of U.S. opposition. It still cannot enjoy normal trade relations with the United States, and it is having difficulty in trying to get hard currency credits to inject vigor into the domestic scene and start paying off the $28 billion foreign debt.

A diplomat here described acceptance by the IMF as mostly psychological

--``their entry back into the real world,`` he called it--because Poland could not expect much more in the first year than the money to pay the interest on the national debt. Even then, it will need to tighten belts even further to meet IMF conditions. That is an unhappy prospect in a country where price increases (announced again for this year) have at times led to riots.

EVEN IF, BY borrowing from Peter to pay Paul, he can get the economy moving again, Jaruzelski also needs to find a role for the opposition. The government is ``torturing itself,`` in the words of one observer, to work out a way to do this.

Various solutions are under scrutiny. One is a British-style ``loyal opposition,`` which in Poland`s political context must mean communist opposition. Another is a Catholic minority party, which the government would expect the church to keep under control.

Paradoxically, the killing of pro-Solidarity Rev. Jerzy Popieluszko, which might have soured church-state relations, led to greater cooperation and some popular sympathy for Jaruzelski. He was pictured as being under attack from hawks within the power structure.

The priest`s murder has not become quite the rallying point predicted, despite lines forming at his graveside. An embryonic ``Jerzy Popieluszko Courage and Truth`` movement, touted by some dissidents as the successor to Solidarity, is still confined to a few parishes in Krakow.

Ecclesiastical authorities, who are building about 1,200 churches under Jaruzelski, helped maintain calm after the killing. But the government helped itself by promptly charging four security policemen and putting them on trial. But whether the instigators of the crime will ever be unearthed is another question. ``People are still distrustful,`` one observer said. ``They think everything is always a sham.``